I could loop an entire minute and 16 seconds whenever I wanted I had no idea how I should use it but I was just excited to have the option open to me whenever I wanted.
I was piggybacking on Skinny as he ran us home and I had to start coming up with a plan of what to do next.
I dismounted from my noble orcish steed and we headed down into the basement only to hear Karson and Clarisse arguing on the sofa. Damn it, and I was looking forward to finally taking a nap on something comfortable too, all this time sleeping on that metal table had played havoc with my back.
Steve saw us come in and immediately ran over to us, "Thank god you two are back can you get them to stop fighting?"
"Hey what's going on guys?" I said leaning my elbows on the back of the sofa. They both turned to me clearly still heated, I guessed that they had been arguing like this for a while.
"The Templar guild want to pay to debate us!" Karson said still side-eyeing Clarisse.
"Ok so what's the big deal?"
"You don't understand Zane. They want to turn us into a laughing stock in front of the press. Guild debates are important for gaining sponsors and boosting reputation, but they would just be making fun of us." Clarisse explained.
"Zane can I talk to you outside for a second." Karson said with a face that indicated how serious this talk would be.
"Yeah sure. Let's give you two a second to cool off."
I followed Karson to the back alley outside and he started to bounce on his feet a little.
"Listen Zane, I only agreed to do this because of your skill. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you first but we really need the money to get a dungeon." I could see it plainly on Karson's face how sorry he was but that didn't mean he wasn't still trying to use me.
"Does Clarisse know?"
"No. I'm sorry really I am but I didn't see another choice. The theme park job got us 7,500; the job you guys just did got us 10,000 and the beast tamer babysitting job Clarisse and I did 2 days ago got us 5,000."
Clarisse and Karson did a job a couple of days ago I must have been so tired from training Skinny I missed it.
"In total we have 22,500 that's not even half enough for even the lowest of the low dungeons."
"OK I understand Karson, it's OK really. Just next time come to me first?"
"Yeah of course."
"How much are we getting for them tarnishing our reputation anyway?"
"They said that they would give us the rights to a dirt ranked dungeon."
I guessed that meant the lowest possible ranking of a dungeon. That just wasn't good enough.
"Karson tomorrow we're going to go to the Templar guild to renegotiate terms."
"B-but you only have 5 seconds."
"Not anymore."
The next rolled around and I really had to maneuver my whole body just to get even a single kink out of my back.
Karson was already outside warming up. The deal I made with him was that we would get him to the second stage of 'Orion's Belt' and then we would head to the Templar guild to milk a better offer out of them.
Karson couldn't see a loss anywhere on his side of the deal so he agreed. If only he knew what I had planned.
Skinny was outside watching Karson stretching laughing his head off. I'd asked Skinny to be here for Karson's rigorous training so Skinny could beat him up.
You see pain and reward are the two biggest motivators so I was going to hurt Karson as much as I could and his reward would be this outstanding deal. I'm really too generous.
As soon as I stepped outside and Skinny saw me he stopped laughing and straightened his posture. Karson looked confused at this but he would soon come to understand that in time Karson would respond the same way during training.
"Karson stop doing yoga and get ready to be moulded into a divine instrument of combat!" I yelled over to Karson.
"Skinny take your place!" Skinny moved over to a few feet opposite of Karson and prepared his axe.
"Now Karson let's get you warmed up shall we?" Karson turned to me with another confused expression before Skinny hit him hard in the stomach with the pommel of his axe.
After an hour of watching Karson get thrown around by Skinny I finally decided that he'd warmed up enough.
"Enough!" I yelled out to them and Skinny stopped mid-kick to Karson, who was on the floor in the foetal position, and walked back over to me.
Karson's red shirt was covered in the dirt from the alley just like the light grey sweat pants he had on underneath.
I walked over to Karson and offered him my hand for him to get up. Which after wincing he took very meekly.
"W-why?" he asked me pleadingly.
"You're not like me and Karson you aren't used to putting your entire body on the line no matter how many injuries you receive. We need to rewire your brain because it's too focused on how you would move with that ridiculous heavy armour of yours." Plus it was cathartic to see him get knocked around after he signed me up to get used yesterday.
"Now show me the first stage of your skill."
Karson complied he drew his sword and all of a sudden a purple aura surrounded it building up until he thrusted it forwards.
After I had watched him do this move over a hundred times with my time loop skill I realised a couple of core things he was doing wrong.
"You're legs are too wide, the sword isn't your dick you don't need to thrust from the hip. You need to propel the power in your arm like a cannon."
"Also don't start the movement all the way at the beginning of the sword thrust, do the thrust first and build up power then and then thrust further using the skill. The skill doesn't improve your swordsmanship it just piles on top of it you should use the sword movement and then use the skill on top of it as an extension."
After a couple of times he finally understood exactly what I was saying and no aura scattered during this double thrust maneuver it was one central destructive force.
"How did you understand so much of what I was doing wrong after only seeing it once?" Karson asked. Not realising that I had just undergone a collective 2 hours staring at the same thing over and over and over again until every mistake he made was drilled in my brain.
"Don't worry about that too much I'm just a good coach." I said with a smile. Karson looked over at Skinny like he was checking if I was being serious but Skinny just nodded. Good boy.
"Now that we've fixed the problems of the first stage…" Karson looked at me like a golden retriever, happy that we were finally going to get to the second stage.
"You need to warm up again!" His face dropped and he looked like he was about to say something to question my methods before Skinny charged in and elbowed him in the face.
Another hour went by and in between I had gone back inside to make some popcorn and I sat there eating it and drinking Dionysus' wine enjoying my favourite movie.
"OK Skinny that's enough you can take a break!"
This time Karson was curled up into a ball on his knees.
"OK Karson you ready for your second stage awakening!" I said shaking his shoulder a little.
He uncurled from his ball and I could see he had gained a black eye and multiple bruises all over his body.
"I-I p-promise I'll n-never try to use you a-again!" He looked at me saying on the verge of tears.
"I know now get up and get ready to enter the second stage!" I barked at him.
Karson leapt up to his legs and straightened his posture ready to use his sword. His face however showed that he had no understanding of how his body had just moved like that.
Turns out conditioning was even easier with my newly practiced trickery. His body would follow simple orders consistently and he would have no idea why.
This new rank in intelligence allowed to be more effective with trickery and therefore made me a much more efficient trainer.
"OK now show me your first stage!"
Karson weakly tried to thrust forward powerfully with his sword but he was shaking and visibly struggling to do it.
Karson looked over to me and said weakly, "Maybe we ought to take a break?"
"Good idea!" I said much to Karson's delight.
"Skinny don't you think that's a great idea?" I turned to Skinny as I said this and he nodded with glee.
"And skinny, what kind of break would be most appropriate for someone who can't move their swords?"
"A warm up maybe?" Skinny said after looking into my eyes for the answer.
"Well Karson what do you think?! Should you get another warm up? Or are you going to use your sword effectively?!" I yelled out to him. Poor Karson he looked like he might faint, he doesn't realise right now but all those bruises and this emotional and mental trauma will serve to strengthen him.
"Now thrust the sword 100 times, and if I see you even waver or fail to produce the skill then I'll toss a coin to see if you start again or you have a nice warm up with Skinny!"
I watched him use his skill 100 times flawlessly after a couple of messed up attempts around the 60 and 80 marks, the last one really stung him when he had been made to go from the beginning.
"OK Perfect! Now do you want some water?"
"Y-yes P-p-please!" he said so exhausted he had become a ghost of the Karson who over 2 hours ago had been out here happily stretching.
"OK then you just need to do one thing."
"A-anything p-please I'm begging you!"
"Slash your sword aura on the next thrust."
He didn't even properly take in what I said but he managed to do it flawlessly first try. He had just managed to get to the second stage of 'Orion's Belt'. The aura didn't just shoot forward it swirled around half of his body and stretched out in a devastating way.
I was afraid me and Skinny would get hit but he managed to just miss us, I couldn't say the same for the scorch and sword marks left all over the walls to the building around us.
"I'm afraid that wasn't perfect so you'll have to do it 100 more times!"
Skinny leaned over to me and whispered, "Are you sure? He looks like he might keel over."
"Maybe you ought to be over there instead practicing axe swings. Do you want to take his place?"
Skinny backed away from me once I had said that as I watched Karson do perfect aura slash after perfect aura slash.
{+10 seconds of time}
Pressure really does make diamonds…
Once Karson had drank some water and taken an hour's rest on the sofa I forced him up because we needed to go and make ourselves look professional.
We stopped in at a nice budget tailors and I had Karson go first to get a suit made as I figured if I let him rest his arms too much they may struggle to work.
"And what colours should the suit be in?"
"I was thinking something in a purple."
It seemed fitting given Karson's slash was purple and Clarisse's witches outfit was also purple, it seemed like it made sense.
We both walked out of the place wearing very dark purple, nearly black, suit jackets and trousers with a slightly less dark purple tie. I also had to stop by a glasses shop to buy Karson a pair of sunglasses to hide his black eyes and some of the bruising.
"OK Karson time for the next part of the deal. Where is the Templar Guild?"
He could only point to a nice looking modern glass building a little further in the distance.
"OK we'll head there now but once we get ourselves a meeting you need to act as serious and strong as you can. There's no point us going in there if your going to look so exhausted and weak."
He responded well to what I said nodding before straightening his posture.
"Hello we are here to have a meeting with the guild leader of the Templar Guild?" I said as businesslike as I could to one of the receptionists in the lobby.
"Why would he want to meet with you two?" She said as nicely as possible whilst casting occasional glances towards Karson's face.
"This here is the guild leader of the Orion guild!" I could see her already cracking a smile, "You know the guild that is famously destroying dungeons. It's all down to this man here!"
That managed to get her from laughing and she had to consider it for a second before she phoned up to I assumed the guild leader's secretary.
So this was what a real guild was supposed to look like, well funded, luxury designs and high class personnel. I think I preferred where I was.
It took about 10 minutes of us waiting on some plush chairs in the lobby before someone came and got us.
"I can't believe you asked for the guild leader! Even I only met him once when I had to make Orion." Karson whispered in my ear as we were walked to an elevator.
"Don't worry about it guild leaders should meet with each other."
"But he seems so busy they took so long to get us."
"That was just a tactic to put us on edge and make us seem not worthy of his time."
"Ok if you say so."
We were walked to the door of the guild leader's office before the secretary walked away.
Karson was about to knock but I grabbed his arm.
I activated my new 1 minute and 26 second time loop and waited to see if I could get the guild leader to tell us to come in.
After about 30 seconds of us both standing there we heard someone tell us to "come inside".
I reset the loop as we walked through the door…
"Wow 10 minutes and 30 seconds you've made us wait today! Karson was thinking we should just flat out reject your offer but I told him we should give you the benefit of the doubt!"
The guild leader turned around in her chair and showed that she was incredibly attractive and powerful looking red-haired woman who wore armour over her power suit. I can't lie the first loop that I walked into her office I was stunned into speechlessness but that had since worn off. It was now the thirty fifth loop by my count and I was sure this was the one.
"My my, brazen aren't you?" she said in a sultry voice clearly trying to goad me into losing this attempt by falling into a discussion.
"Well why don't you 2 take a seat?" The first 5 attempts that I'd failed were because I fell for this trap.
"I have to decline. We really don't want to stay any longer here than we need to."
"Ah yes you would rather go back to your hovel underneath that restaurant." Again this goading takes too much time so I need to sidestep it.
"We are in need of at least a bronze rank dungeon or there is no debate."
"Haha then there is no debate." She said smiling thinking I was an idiot.
"OK fine by Orion. Isn't that right Sir?" Karson always acted mildly surprised when I called him sir but he managed to keep it together.
"Absolutely." Karnon said promptly, fully allowing me to hold the reins of this conversation.
"You see he wanted just to come by and see if you were serious or not. We have another debate scheduled with the 'Waterlily' Guild."
This threw her off, a crack in her façade, the Waterlily Guild (Clarisse's old guild) were a lot more powerful than the Templar Guild and this stayed the same no matter how many competitions or debates the two guilds had.
Creating a weakness is always a good strategy against a more powerful enemy. This guild's weakness happened to be Waterlily.
"You can't be serious. Why would they be interested in talking to your merry men?" The Templar leader spat out.
"Well because Sir here has broken through to the second stage of 'Orion's Belt', not to mention the fact that we have managed to bring the famous Blood-Axe (Skinny's old name) out of retirement and also because we are the only guild that can destroy dungeons."
"Tsk fine we can debate for a bronze rank dungeon but only if you win." The leader probably thought she had won by having the last word but I was about to pull the floor from underneath her.
"Sold. But your still going to pay us 30,000 even for attending."
"Fine!" she said through gritted teeth.
I cancelled the loop right before it ran it again and shook her hand.
"It has been a pleasure doing such business with a refined woman like yourself."
She had no idea what to say after that so we began to walk away. But before we reached the doorway I had one last thing to say to her.
"I really hope that you're debating skills are better than your business meetings. If not then it might seem unfair to take that dungeon from you."
As the door closed behind us I could just about make out the sounds of her cursing and yelling whilst we went back to the elevator. I think so far this is the most smug I've felt.
The secretary that had showed us in was being berated on the phone until she tried to catch us.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like me to show you back down? Or maybe to some of our facilities?" the secretary tried to offer us.
"No thank you. We haven't forgotten how to use an elevator in the past 3 minutes. As for the facilities our guild has their own."
We got in the elevator and headed back down. Time to get back to our guild after all Karson has training in the morning…